Shark Bait
by ArgentumAurora
Summary: ONE-SHOT. A business predicament has forced Rin and Haru into a strange and unpredictable situation... **This is short and not super detailed. I was just doing a daily one-shot thing to improve my writing.**
1. Part One

**Title:** Shark Bait

 **Pairing:** Rin x Haru

 **Time Limit:** 20 minutes

 **Prompt:** Arranged marriage (general AU prompt by quinnandersonwrites of Tumblr, found via dailyau of Tumblr)

 **Notes:** I decided to try doing a "daily one-shot" thing, so I'm setting the timer for twenty minutes and we'll see what happens. I needed a little RinHaru in my day, so here we go. This is a one-shot, and will remain as such. The prompt was not mine, hopefully you can tell who I've gotten it from. Enjoy!

Six o'clock pm at the Nanase household began with a phone ringing. Haru, who'd been standing over a pan of mackerel at the stove, moved to answer it without checking the caller id, assuming it was Makoto calling to ask about today's math notes. His friend had fallen asleep in class, having spent yesterday afternoon training aggressively for their next swim meet. The voice that spoke up on the other end of the line was not Makoto.

"Haruka?"

"Dad?" Haru asked, surprise filtering into his tone. The boy rarely showed emotion, but his father rarely called home. They were even.

"Are you busy, Haruka? There's something we need to discuss," the man said. Haru's gut churned. His grades were good. What did his dad have to pester him about?

"I've got a minute," Haru replied. He prodded the mackerel. About a minute left until it was done cooking.

When his father continued, Haru was shocked to hear the twinge of nervousness in his father's voice. "A business situation has come up. I'm sorry we couldn't discuss the matter with you first, but it was urgent."

Haru did not want to fly to his father's work in the States. That meant leaving his friends and his pool behind. That would not work.

"We've arranged a marriage for you."

Haru nearly dropped the phone. The mackerel had started to burn.

"You did what?" The red-haired boy shouted.

"I'm sorry Rin, but it had to be done. The company needed help. Your education at Samezuka isn't cheap, either, you know," his mother sighed impatiently.

Rin sighed. "I know. Can you tell me the girl's name at least?"

He could hear his mother fidgeting through the phone. "Mom?" He pressed on.

"Well, this person… Isn't a girl…" His mother said softly. _She didn't just… I must've heard her wrong._

"Not… A girl?" Rin repeated. His mother hummed in agreement, one of those high, whiny hums she did when she was nervous.

"What's his name then?" Rin asked.

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. For a minute, Rin wondered if she was even going to tell him at all.

"His name is Haruka Nanase."

The members of the Iwatobi Swim Team were just exiting the locker room to go to practice when a startling and not entirely welcome guest barged into the swimming facilities. Strangely, Haru was the last one to leave the locker room today. He'd been oddly quiet as they changed. Not that he wasn't usually quiet, but the others could tell something was weighing on the freestyle swimmer's mind.

"Nanase!" The familiar voice belonged to none other than Rin. The four members of the swim team looked up in alarm, but none as much as Haru.

"Rin? What are you doing here?" Haru asked as Rin came to a stop a few feet away from him. The pool glittered behind the black-haired boy, as if teasing him.

"I came to talk to you about…" Rin trailed off. Usually so confident and suave, the red-haired swimmer seemed to be at a loss for words. Really, he just wasn't sure how to bring up something like this in public.

Haru's blue eyes never wavered from Rin's red ones. He said nothing; all the communication he needed to do could be accomplished by his calm stare. His teammates, however, had no idea what was going on.

"Is everything okay, Rin-chan, Haru-chan?" Nagisa asked, concern evident in the blonde boy's words.

"Don't you have practice now, Rin-san?" Rei asked. Luckily for them, Gou had stopped to talk to a teacher after school, and had yet to discover her brother's presence at Iwatobi.

Rin nodded. "Yeah, I do. But I needed to talk to Nanase about something."

"What is it?" Nagisa asked, glancing between the two rivals with wide eyes.

The two boys shifted, neither one quite sure how to answer their friend's question.

"You don't have to tell us, Haru," Makoto offered.

There was another long, uncomfortable silence. Thankfully, Haru broke it by bluntly stating, "Rin and I are now engaged."


	2. Part Two

**Title:** Shark Bait (Part Two)

 **Pairing:** Rin x Haru

 **Time:** 20 minutes

 **Prompt:** Continuing from last time. I'll try to explain a little more about why it happened, and wrap things up a little bit.

 **Notes:** See prompt. Part of my Daily One-Shot thing.

* * *

Of course Haru had to swim first. Apparently knowing that he was now engaged to Rin was not enough to stop the black-haired boy from having swim practice before sitting down to a much-needed conversation with the redhead.

Rin sat and watched the Iwatobi boys practice for two hours. Gou, of course, was thrilled to see him, and refused to leave him alone. She was quite put out when Rin told her to go home so that he could talk to Haru in private. The rest of the team had already cleared out, now that practice was over.

Haru was still in the pool. Rin walked over and sat cross-legged at the pool's edge. Haru swam over and began to tread water near the redhead, clearly waiting for the other to speak first.

"Aren't you surprised?" Rin asked. It was all he could think of to say, for the moment. No, that wasn't right; there were a thousand things he wanted to ask Haru, but he couldn't bring himself to ask them yet. Besides, Haru was always so unreadable when it came to emotions.

"Yes," Haru replied.

Rin huffed, slightly annoyed that Haru couldn't at least do him the courtesy of looking half as disturbed by this as Rin felt. "My mom wouldn't tell me anything other than that we're… yeah."

Haru took this with silence. Rin went on. "Do you know why they're doing this?"

"Business. My dad needed to acquire the services your mom's company offered. Your mom was the best in the business before her company started going downhill. An arranged marriage wasn't originally going to be part of the deals, but apparently there was some mix up in the paperwork, someone added 'arranged marriage' to the list of terms from your mom as a joke, but my dad didn't take it that way and thought your mom was serious about it. Apparently pride runs in your family, Rin, because when your mom found out, she didn't admit until after the deal had been made that it wasn't her idea."

Rin thought that was quite possibly the most words he'd heard Haru say at one time in… well, that might've been a new record. Although, considering the circumstances, Rin thought it was probably warranted.

Still, though, the way Haru said it, it sounded like all of this was his mom's fault… No, not his mom, whatever employee had been stupid enough to throw something like that in as a joke. He hoped that person had been fired.

* * *

He wasn't taking this well. Haru could see that. Between the two of them, Rin was the chatterbox, the one who discussed things and told stories and generally relieved Haru of having to say anything at all.

He could see by the tensing of Rin's defined muscles that he was agitated about something. He'd neglected to tell Rin that said employee who had started all of this hadn't been getting along with Rin's mother, who was only keeping the man around through the end of the negotiations with Haru's father anyway due to poor conduct. That was a conversation Rin could have with his mother if that's what he so desired.

For now, he had to stay focused on the present. The marriage was in place now. If Haru knew anything about the older Nanase and Matsuoka generations, it was that both sets were proud; neither would admit to wanting to call off the marriage. They would all just have to make the best of it.

"Rin," Haru said. Apparently he'd caught the redhead by surprise; Rin startled, but met Haru's bright blue gaze.

"Did you bring your jammers?" Haru asked. Inside, his stomach was feeling a little bit uncertain of itself, but he pressed on. He felt somehow obligated to try to smooth over the tension between them, and this was his best effort at doing so.

"Yeah," Rin replied. A few more seconds passed before the red-haired boy caught on, and Haru gained a shark-toothed grin from him.

Rin stood up and went into the Iwatobi locker room. "I'll be back in a minute."

Haru swam another two laps before Rin emerged again, naked but for his jammers. Red hair concealed under a swim cap, Rin snapped his goggles against his head as he always did, and dove into the pool, surfacing a few feet from Haru.

Their eyes met, and that was all the communication necessary for the two swimmers to climb out of the water in preparation for a race. No matter what happened between their parents, their relationship had always been theirs and only theirs in the pool. Engaged or not, they were still friends and rivals. They dove in.

 **Notes:** Ok, well, I didn't think coming up with an explanation would be so hard! But there you go :) This is the last I'll do in this little series, so hopefully you enjoyed it. This fic is also posted on Archive of Our Own under the same username. I've got another RinHaru piece in the works for you guys, hopefully it'll be out in a week or so? Anyway, keep being awesome! Thanks for reading!


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